The Prince Of Mist

by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Genres: Horror; Paranormal Romance; General Fiction

Synopsis

It’s wartime, and the Carver family decides to leave the capital where they live and move to a small coastal village where they’ve recently bought a home. But from the minute they cross the threshold, strange things begin to happen. In that mysterious house there still lurks the spirit of Jacob, the previous owner’s son, who died by drowning.

With the help of their new friend Roland, Max and Alicia Carver begin to explore the suspicious circumstances of that death and discover the existence of a mysterious being called “The Prince of Mist”—a diabolical character who has returned from the shadows to collect on a debt from the past.

Soon the three friends will find themselves caught up in an adventure of sunken ships and an enchanted stone garden which will change their lives forever.

A Blackstone Audio production.

Release date: April 16, 2010

Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Print pages: 224

Sample

MAX WOULD NEVER FORGET that faraway summer when, almost by chance, he discovered magic. It was 1943, and the winds of war were dragging the world
relentlessly toward the abyss. In the middle of June, on Max’s thirteenth birthday, his father, an eccentric watchmaker and
inventor of dazzling if completely impractical devices, gathered the family in the living room to announce that this would
be their last day in the lofty apartment perched high above the oldest part of the city, a place that had been their home
ever since Max could remember. A deathly silence fell upon the members of the Carver family. They looked at each other, and
then at the watchmaker. He had that smile on his face they all knew so well, the one that always meant he had bad news or
another of his crazy ideas.


“We are moving,” he announced, “to a beach house in a small town on the coast. We’re getting out of this city and away from
the war.”


Max gulped, then timidly raised his hand in protest. The other members of the family joined in, but the watchmaker waved away
their concerns. He was on a roll now, and he laid out his plan with military precision. There would be no going back on the
decision: They were leaving the next morning at dawn. Now they had to pack up their most prized possessions and prepare for
the long journey to their new home.


In truth, the family was not entirely surprised by the news. They all suspected that the idea of leaving the city in search
of a better place to live had been on Maximilian Carver’s mind for some time—everyone, that is, except his son, Max. To him,
the news felt like a mad steam train hurtling through a china shop. His mind went blank, his mouth sagged, and his eyes glazed
over. As he stood, transfixed, it occurred to him that his entire world—his friends at school, everyone he hung out with,
even the corner shop where he bought his comics—was about to vanish forever.


While the rest of the family went off to pack up their belongings, finally resigned to their fate, Max remained staring at
his father. The watchmaker knelt down and placed his hands gently on his son’s shoulders. The look on Max’s face spoke volumes.


“It might seem like the end of the world to you now, Max, but I promise you’ll like the place we’re moving to. You’ll make
new friends; you’ll see.”


“Is it because of the war?” asked Max. “Is that why we have to leave?”

A shadow of sadness fell across his father’s eyes. All the drive and conviction of the speech he had made to them earlier
was gone, and it occurred to Max that perhaps his father was the one who was most afraid of leaving. But if he had pretended
to be excited about the move, then it was because it was the best thing for his family. There was no other option.


“It’s bad, isn’t it?” Max asked.

“Things’ll get better. We’ll be back. I promise.”

Maximilian Carver hugged his son and smiled mysteriously, then pulled an object out of his jacket pocket and put it in Max’s
hands. It was a shiny oval that hung from a chain. A pocket watch.


“I made it for you. Happy birthday, Max.”

Max opened the silver watch. The hours on the face were marked by moons that waxed and waned to the rhythm of time, and the
hands were rays of a sun radiating out from the center of the dial. On the case, engraved in fine script, were the words MAX’S TIME MACHINE.


For a second Max wished his father’s latest invention really could stop time. Yet when he raised his eyes and glanced through
the window, it already seemed to him as if the light of day was receding and the endless city of spires and domes, of chimneys
weaving cobwebs of smoke across the iron skies, had started to fade away.


Years later, as he remembered the scene, his family wandering to and fro with their bags while he sat in a corner clutching
the watch his father had given him, Max knew that this was the day he left his childhood behind.




That night Max didn’t sleep a wink. While the rest of the family slept, he lay awake, dreading the dawn when he would have
to say good-bye to the small universe he had built for himself over the years. The hours crept by silently as he lay stretched
out on his bed, his eyes lost in the blue shadows that danced on the ceiling, as if he might find in them some oracle that
could predict his destiny; in his hand was the watch his father had made for him. The moons glowed in the darkness of the
night—perhaps they held the answer to all the questions he had begun to ask himself that afternoon.


Finally, day began to break over the horizon in a streak of red light. Max jumped out of bed and went down to the living room.
His father was sitting in an armchair, fully dressed, reading a book by the light of an oil lamp. Max was not the only one
who had spent a sleepless night. The watchmaker smiled at him and closed his book.


“What are you reading?” asked Max, pointing at the thick volume.

“It’s a book about Copernicus. I take it you know who he is?” asked Mr. Carver.

“I do go to school, you know,” said Max.

His father sometimes still treated him as if he were a child.

“Well, what do you know about him?” his father asked insistently.

“He discovered that the earth turns around the sun, not the other way around.”

“Not bad. And do you know what that means?”

“Problems,” Max replied.

The watchmaker smiled and handed Max the hefty tome.

“Here, it’s yours. Read it.”

Max inspected the mysterious leather-bound volume. It looked as if it was a thousand years old and might house the spirit
of some age-old genie trapped in its pages by an ancient curse.


“Well, now,” his father said abruptly, “who’s going to wake your sisters?”

Without looking up from the book, Max shook his head to indicate that he was granting his father the honor of dragging his
two sisters—Alicia, aged fifteen, and Irina, aged eight—out of their beds.


While Maximilian Carver walked off to give the rest of the family their wake-up call, Max settled into the armchair and began
to read. He lost himself in the words and images conjured in his mind, and for a while he forgot that his family was going
anywhere. He found himself flying among stars and planets, but then he raised his eyes and saw his mother standing next to
him with tears in her eyes.


“You and your sisters were born in this house,” she murmured.

“We’ll be back,” he said, echoing his father’s words. “You’ll see.”

His mother smiled at him and kissed him on the forehead.

“As long as you’re with me, I don’t care where we go,” she said.

His mother had a way of reading his thoughts. Half an hour later, the entire family crossed the front doorway for the last
time, heading toward a new life. Summer had begun.




Max had once read in one of his father’s books that some childhood images become engraved in the mind like photographs, like
scenes you can return to again and again and will always remember, no matter how much time goes by. He understood the meaning
of those words the first time he saw the sea. The family had been traveling on the train for over three hours when, all of
a sudden, they emerged from a dark tunnel and Max found himself gazing at an endless expanse of ethereal light, the electric
blue of the sea shimmering beneath the midday sun, imprinting itself on his retina like a supernatural apparition. The ashen
light that perpetually drowned the old city already seemed like a distant memory. He felt as if he had spent his entire life
looking at the world through a black-and-white lens and suddenly it had sprung into life in full, luminous color he could
almost touch. As the train continued its journey only a few meters from the shore, Max leaned out the window and, for the
first time ever, felt the touch of salty wind on his skin. He turned to look at his father, who was watching him from the
other end of the compartment with his mysterious smile, nodding in reply to a question Max hadn’t even asked. At that moment,
Max promised himself that whatever their destination, whatever the name of the station this train was taking them to, from
that day on he would never live anywhere where he couldn’t wake up every morning to see that same dazzling blue light that
rose toward heaven like some magical essence.




While Max stood on the platform watching the train ride away through clouds of steam, Mr. Carver left his family standing
beside their suitcases outside the stationmaster’s office and went off to negotiate a reasonable price for the transportation
of luggage, people, and paraphernalia to their final destination. Max’s first impression of the town, judging from the station
and the few houses he could see, their roofs peeping timidly over the surrounding trees, was that it looked like one of those
miniature villages, the sort you got with train sets, where the imaginary inhabitants were in danger of falling off a table
if they wandered too far. Max was busy contemplating this variation on Copernicus’s theory of the universe when his mother’s
voice rescued him from his daydream.


“Well, Max. What’s the verdict?”

“It’s too soon to tell,” he answered. “It looks like a model, like those ones you see in toy-shop windows.”

“Maybe it is,” his mother said, smiling. “But don’t tell your father,” she went on. “Here he comes now.”

Maximilian Carver was escorted by two burly porters whose clothes were splattered with grease stains, soot, and other unidentifiable
substances. Both had thick mustaches and wore sailor’s caps as if this was their uniform.


“This is Robin and Philip,” the watchmaker explained. “Robin will take the luggage and Philip will take us. Is that all right?”

Max wasn’t clear who was Philip and who was Robin, and he wondered if they could even tell themselves, but he chose to keep
his mouth shut. Without waiting for the family’s approval, the two men walked over to the mountain of trunks, and each hoisted
up the largest ones as if they weighed nothing. Max pulled out his watch and looked at the face with its curving moons. It
was two o’clock. The old station clock said half past twelve.


“The station clock is slow,” muttered Max.

“You see?” his father replied excitedly. “We’ve only just arrived and already there’s work here for us.”

His mother gave a faint smile, as she always did when Maximilian Carver had one of his bursts of radiant optimism, but Max
could see a hint of sadness in her eyes, that peculiar light that, ever since he was a child, had led him to believe that
his mother could foresee events in the future that the rest of them could not even dream of.


“Everything’s going to be all right, Mum,” he said, feeling like an idiot the moment he’d spoken.

His mother stroked his cheek.

“Of course, Max. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Suddenly, Max felt certain that someone was looking at him. He spun around and saw a large cat staring at him through the
bars of one of the station windows. The cat blinked and, with a prodigiously agile leap for an animal of that size, jumped
through the window, padded over to Irina, and rubbed its back against her pale ankles, meowing softly. Max’s sister knelt
down to stroke it, then picked it up in her arms. The cat let itself be cuddled and gently licked the little girl’s fingers.
Irina smiled, spellbound, and, still cradling the animal in her arms, walked over to where her family was waiting.


“We’ve only just got here and already you’ve picked up some disgusting beast. Goodness knows what it’s infested with,” Alicia
snapped.


“It’s not a disgusting beast. It’s a cat and it’s been abandoned,” replied Irina. “Mum?”

“Irina, we haven’t even got to the house yet.”

Irina pulled a face, to which the cat contributed a sweet, seductive meow.

“It can stay in the garden. Please…”

Alicia rolled her eyes. Max watched his older sister. She had not opened her mouth since they had left the city; her expression
was impenetrable and her eyes seemed to be lost in the distance. If anyone in the family was not overjoyed by the promise
of a new life it was Alicia. Max was tempted to make a joke about “Her Highness the Ice Princess,” but decided not to. Something
told him that his sister had left behind much more in the city than he could possibly imagine.


“It’s fat and it’s ugly,” Alicia added. “Are you really going to let her get her own way again?”

Irina threw a steely glare at her older sister, an open declaration of war unless the latter kept her mouth shut. Alicia held
her gaze for a few moments and then turned around, sighing with frustration, and walked over to where the porters were loading
the luggage. On the way she passed her father, who noticed her red face.


“Quarreling already?” asked Maximilian Carver. “What’s the matter?”

Irina presented the cat to her father. The feline, to its credit, purred adoringly. Never one to falter in the face of authority,
Irina proceeded to make her case with a determination she had inherited from her father.


“It’s all alone in the world. Someone’s abandoned it. We can’t leave it here. Can we take it with us? It can live in the garden
and I’ll look after it. I promise,” Irina said, her words spilling over each other.


The watchmaker looked in astonishment at the cat, then at his wife.

“You always said caring for an animal gives a person a sense of responsibility,” Irina added.

“Did I ever say that?”

“Many times. Those exact words.”

Her father sighed.

“I don’t know what your mother will say….”

“And what do you say, Maximilian Carver?” asked Mrs. Carver, with a grin that showed her amusement at what had now become her husband’s dilemma.


“Well… we’d have to take it to the vet and…”

“Pleeease…” whimpered Irina.

The watchmaker and his wife exchanged a look.

“Why not?” concluded Maximilian Carver, who could not bear the thought of starting the summer with a family feud. “But you’ll
have to look after it. Promise?”


Irina’s face lit up. The cat’s pupils narrowed to a slit until they looked like black needles against the luminous gold of
its eyes.


“Come on! Hurry up!” said the watchmaker. “The luggage has been loaded.”

Holding the cat in her arms, Irina ran toward the van. The creature, its head leaning on the girl’s shoulder, kept its eyes
nailed on Max defiantly.


“It was waiting for us,” he muttered. . .